Twitter

How To Get Your Twitter Audience To Remember And Trust You

January 8, 2016 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Before a blog visitor decides to subscribe, that visitor must trust you. When visitors enter their email addresses, they are trusting you with the following:

Their email address
The fact that when they see your messages in the inbox, those messages will be epic

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, Twitter is the best social network for generating blog traffic. It is the single social network that transformed my blog and me as a person.

The reason people within my Twitter audience visit my blog is because they have come to trust the content. It’s the same reason why we click on the same people’s links over and over again.

When we see tweets from certain users, we stop what we are doing and click on the link. We read the article they tweeted.

We only see the headline but we are immediately hooked into reading more. When I see a Jeff Bullas or Kim Garst tweet in the home stream, I pause what I am doing and read what they recently tweeted.

How do we create that same effect for our tweets and our content? How can we grow an audience of people who will stop what they are doing and read our content right when they see one of our tweets?

The answer is to build trust which is easier said than done. But it is doable. As you continue to build trust with your audience, you will discover that building trust with your audience is easier than it sounds.

Building trust is broken into two steps. The first step is the preparation step while the second step is to build on top of the foundation gradually over a long period of time.

You will never get someone’s complete trust in one day, but if you stay consistent and build the trust over time, those same people will come to trust you.

But first comes the foundation. Here’s how you get that set up on your Twitter account:

#1: Have The Right Profile Picture

Your profile picture is the first thing people will look at. Since the human mind can register pictures 60,000 times faster than text, we’ll look at the profile picture before we read the bio.

The first impression comes just before we read the bio. The accounts with blurry profile pictures (or worse, that…egg) won’t receive much attention.

The clear profile pictures that either display a nice picture of you or your brand’s logo are the winners that get the most attention. All of the other pictures don’t win.

Even if it takes you 30 minutes to find the right picture of yourself, those 30 minutes you spend now will help you to build trust with your audience later.

#2: Create A Background Picture

The background picture is another critical factor towards building trust. It is the second most important part of your Twitter account.

The background picture you choose for your Twitter account must help someone understand what you do. For someone who has never heard of me before, my background picture creates the quick intro:

But in addition to getting people to know who I am in one picture, I do a subtle promotion. At the left corner is a picture of my free eBook’s cover.

It’s going to be an eBook cover that they see often. People looking at my Twitter profile don’t have to scroll down too long before they see the pinned tweet that promotes the same free eBook.

The background picture can promote one of your products and let people know who you are at the same time. Kim Garst does a phenomenal job with her background pictures. Here is one of the pictures she recently set as the background picture.

Some of the picture focuses on what she does and other parts of the picture focus on her product.

At this point, some people may look past this method thinking that it would take too much time to create a nice background picture. However, who said you have to create the background picture.

I don’t know how many people are on Kim Garst’s team, but I can tell you for sure that I did not create my background picture. Someone else created it for me after I made suggestions as to how the background picture should look.

That way, you can have an epic background picture without the creation phase taking up too much of your time.

#3: Write An Effective Bio

Once people take the time to look at your profile picture and your background picture, the final part of your foundation is writing an effective bio.

Captivating pictures will result in people taking the time to read your bio and learn more about who you are. They want to know about what you do as a profession but also what you do outside of your profession.

I am more than a digital marketing expert, author, entrepreneur, and blogger. While all of those things do apply to me, there are certain parts of my life that are important in crafting my identity.

For instance, I am a Red Sox fan in New York—the rare breed of human that is more rare than a shiny Pokemon.

I have had conversations with many of my followers that have nothing to do with digital marketing. Some of those conversations are directly related to the Red Sox.

Take a look at my bio. I have had conversations with people based on what I put in that bio about my personal life.

I have exchanged dog pictures with some of my followers and let others know what my fastest times are in certain running events.

When people get to know you as a professional AND as a person, that’s when trust begins to develop. You want to be a people’s person who is easy to talk with.

Each hobby you write within your bio that has nothing to do with business gives your audience another opportunity to connect with you. Some people followed me because I like dogs, and these same people have had conversations in which we talk about our pets.

Later on, these same people read my blog posts and wait for my next piece of content.

#4: What You Tweet

After the foundation has been built, the final factor is what you tweet. If you consistently tweet valuable content throughout the day, then you will appear in your followers’ home streams more often.

The more you appear there, the more your followers will remember you. By consistently tweeting valuable content, the same people who see you often will come to trust you.

To determine what is valuable content, ask yourself who your audience is and what type of content they would specifically want to read. I read many articles about running faster, but my audience of people who want to learn more about social media would not get the same value from those articles that I do.

That’s why I focus on tweeting digital marketing related content. It’s what my audience wants.

In Conclusion

Most of the work involved with building trust is setting up the foundation. Once the foundation is laid out, you build upon that foundation by tweeting valuable content.

However, once you gain your audience’s trust, you must use this privilege responsibly. We know that trust is something that we shouldn’t abuse. It’s difficult to gain trust but it is so easy to break that same trust.

If you stop tweeting, or you tweet less frequently, fewer people will remember who you are, and as a result, they won’t trust you as much. Never become overconfident that the trust from your audience will last forever.

That way, you will strive to always build upon the current trust and constantly provide your audience with your best content.

What are your thoughts about using Twitter to build trust? How do you get your followers to remember who you are on Twitter? Do you have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Twitter

January 6, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

If there is one social network that you need to master for the sake of your blog’s growth, that social network must be Twitter.

Out of all of the social networks I use, Twitter brings in the most traffic. And many prominent bloggers within my niche have praised Twitter in a similar way.

Twitter just happens to be a great social network for getting more blog traffic. But only if you know how to bring your followers over to your blog.

The way you use Twitter ultimately determines what you get out of it. To get the best out of your Twitter efforts and generate more blog traffic, follow these four tips.

#1: Pin A Tweet Promoting Something On Your Blog

A while ago, Twitter rolled out a new feature that allows people to pin a tweet to the top of their feeds.

If you want people who visit your Twitter profile to always see a specific blog post or page on your blog, then you can pin one of your tweets. That pinned tweet will also generate massive social proof since it’s half-life is infinite.

The half-life of most tweets are very short. Within a few hours, most tweets become completely irrelevant and pushed to the bottom of our ever growing feeds.

When you pin a tweet to the top of your feed, that tweet does not die. It is immortal until you decide to pin another tweet on the top of your profile instead.

Right now, I am still going strong with the same pinned tweet that has hundreds of likes and retweets. The massive social proof indicates popularity and gets people to click on the link and share it with their audiences.

It’s no wonder that this particular landing page is the most popular thing I have on my blog.

#2: Tweet Consistently Throughout The Day

If you go to different blog posts, you will get different advice on how many tweets to send in a given day. Some people will advise 10 tweets per day while others will advise no more than five tweets per day.

The actual science of tweeting frequency is discovering what works best with your audience. What works best for my audience is tweeting consistently throughout the day.

I started tweeting more often when I saw other people doing the exact same thing and getting better results because of it. I wondered if I could double my daily tweets and then double my blog traffic from Twitter.

It turns out I could, and as a result, my blog grew exponentially over the next few months.

The growth my blog experienced was directly related to my tweeting more often. However, I’m not simply tweeting anything that comes to mind.

I am tweeting my blog posts often. In fact, I tweet about my own blog posts more than 90% of the time. Some people would advise to only tweet your content 20% of the time, but I discovered something different:

As long as you tweet valuable content, your followers will appreciate it.

If you write valuable content and want to promote that valuable content, then your audience will appreciate it. Even if you only tweet your own blog posts, people within your audience will still read your content and engage with you all the same.

#3: Tweet With 1-2 Hashtags

Tweets with 1-2 hashtags have been proven to get more engagement than tweets that don’t have any hashtags at all. Getting more engagement from your tweets will result in more blog traffic for you.

And including 1-2 hashtags within a tweet is one of the easiest ways to boost engagement. Not only will you get more engagement, but you will also get more exposure.

I like to view hashtags as the SEO for Twitter. When you type in a hashtag into Twitter’s search engine, all tweets with that hashtag will show up. When someone clicks on a hashtag, that person then sees the most recent tweets containing the hashtag.

Including relevant hashtags within your tweets makes it easy for people to find your tweets. Better yet, if you can take advantage of a trending hashtag and relevantly insert that hashtag into your tweet, then that tweet will pick up some exposure from the trending topics.

Tweets that including trending topics are going to be seen by a significant amount of the Twitter population.

#4: Make It Easier For People To Share Your Blog Posts Via Twitter

All of my blog posts include a tweet button at the very bottom. I include this tweet button at the bottom of all of my blog posts to make it easier for people to tweet my content.

While the tweet button is a nice start, there are several ways to make it easier for people to share your content.

You can have social media icons on the side that drag down so people can share your content at any point.

For Twitter in particular, you can also use tools like Click To Tweet and various WordPress plugins that allow you to create links to custom tweets in the middle of your blog posts. Here is an example:

[Tweet “4 Ways To Get More #Blog Traffic From #Twitter. http://bit.ly/1OvGd7C”]

I used the Click To Tweet plugin to create this custom tweet in a few seconds. Custom tweets like these that are in the middle of blog posts are easy to notice.

As a result, more people utilize these custom tweets.

The best part is that since you can craft the custom tweet in any way you like, you can create a shortened link (less characters get taken up), add hashtags where you believe they are necessary, and track clicks if your shortened link comes with statistics (if you are unsure of which link shortener to use, go with Bit.ly. It’s free and awesome)

In Conclusion

Twitter is the best social network for getting more blog traffic. By changing how you engage with your audience and tracking your results, you are bound to get more blog traffic from Twitter.

Just like anything else in life, Twitter Domination is a journey. Dominating the platform requires an investment in your time that may feel difficult in the short-run but will be very rewarding in the long-run.

If at any point you feel overwhelmed by Twitter, you can always outsource some of the work. I used to do everything for my Twitter account’s success all by myself. As my workload grew, maintaining my Twitter account seemed to get in the way of everything else.

I decided to outsource parts of my Twitter strategy, and then more time began to open up. Twitter is not the ultimatum to success, but it is one of the most valuable platforms that will aid in your blog’s growth.

What are your thoughts about using Twitter to get more blog traffic? Is Twitter the supreme social network in your strategy or do you believe another social network is more important than Twitter? Which of these tips was your favorite? Sound off in the comments section below.

What To Outsource In Your Twitter Strategy

November 18, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Twitter, just as all social networks, is a double-edged sword. Twitter can provide many opportunities, but it can also take up too much of our time. Small business owners constantly want to utilize social networks like Twitter but rarely have enough time to do so.

Twitter is the main reason I became a digital marketing expert. Once I got comfortable with Twitter, it was easier to get comfortable with the other social networks. In addition to the comfort, most of the interviews and guest blogging opportunities came directly from people who first saw me on Twitter.

Then time became a factor. During my junior year of high school, I had so little time for my business that the only thing I could focus on was Twitter. I saw the growth of my audience and was happy. However, I wasn’t fully utilizing the revenue generating opportunities.

Many small business owners find themselves on the seesaw with social media activity on one side and revenue generating activity (quicker revenue versus long-term revenue and social proof you get from social media) on the other side.

No matter how much you try, you won’t perfectly balance on the seesaw. Unless you have freelancers working for you.

The most significant decision I have made for my business in 2015 was outsourcing my workload. The only thing I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers. Virtually everything else I do on Twitter is outsourced.

This one decision has saved me an enormous amount of time. I want you to see similar results. Here’s what you need to outsource in your Twitter strategy:

#1: Prewritten Tweets

Many Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same type of content. Some Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same tweets in a cycle. If you are not one of these two Twitter users, you may find it difficult to schedule any tweets at all.

Regardless of which type of tweeter you are, outsourcing that work solves the problem. All of my tweets are scheduled by someone else. That saves me 15 minutes per day. 15 minutes per day may not seem like a lot, but the crumbs add up.

We all want to be successful on social media. Therefore, it only makes sense to look at successful social media accounts. Take a look at The Huffington Post’s account. Arriana Huffington does not publish the tweets that show up on @HuffingtonPost.

All of the top brands have social media management teams. However, you don’t need to be as big as The Huffington Post to outsource your tweets. You can find a freelancer on a place like Fiverr or UpWork. Then tell the freelancer what types of tweets you want them to write and publish on your account. Be specific.

Then you can devote your time towards other areas of your business. If you find yourself tweeting multiple on-the-fly tweets, you can potentially anticipate those tweets (i.e. if you know you will tweet affiliate links for the next three weeks) and tell the freelancer to schedule the tweets.

#2: Audience Growth

Imagine gaining hundreds of Twitter followers every day without being on Twitter every day. Just a year ago, I thought this was impossible. I thought I would have to put in all of the work to grow my Twitter audience.

Then I hired a freelancer and told him what to do. Now that part of my strategy is automated. This decision allowed me to save an extra 30 minutes per day.

Remember how those small crumbs add up. Now I’m saving 45 minutes per day (and Twitter isn’t the only thing I outsourced so I save more time than 45 minutes).

Learn how to grow your audience and examine how your freelancer grows your audience. That way, you are bound to achieve rapid audience growth without putting in any time.

#3: Account Problems

One of my CSV files had a bug where apostrophes were replaced by question marks. Here’s what happened:

Original Tweet: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog’s Traffic

With The Bug: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog??s Traffic

I told my freelancer (the one who schedules my tweets) about the problem. I proposed some ideas about why the problem occurs and then my freelancer was on it.

I no longer worry about these issues because I have a team around me putting in the time to fix these issues.

#4: Engagement

Engagement is the one thing on this list that I will never outsource. For some people however, it may be a good idea to outsource the interaction between your account and your followers. That depends on the amount of interaction your account receives each day and if you feel comfortable with someone interacting with them for you.

If you don’t interact with your followers because you don’t have the time, then outsource this part of your Twitter strategy. It’s better for your Twitter interaction to get outsourced than it is for no interaction to happen at all. Be very careful with this one. Make sure you set very clear expectations with this one.

In Conclusion

Outsourcing your Twitter strategy will open up more time that you can repurpose towards other areas in your business. When you choose to outsource your Twitter strategy, the only thing you must do is make sure your freelancers are doing their work.

In the beginning, never assume that you and your freelancers are on the same page. It is usual for miscommunications to occur in the beginning until you and your freelancers get into a groove. Look over their work and make sure they are doing a great job.

What are your thoughts about outsourcing your Twitter strategy? What do you want to start outsourcing? Do you have any ideas for other parts of the Twitter strategy that you believe should get outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Ways To Get More Social Signals

September 9, 2015 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Social Media Shares — Who doesn’t want more traffic?

Social signals—retweets, likes, repins, and anything similar on social media—let Google know people are engaging with your blog. Social signals have grown in importance for search engine ranking.

If you don’t want to take SEO seriously yet but want to get search engine traffic anyway, becoming successful on social media is the best way to start. A little fact about my traffic: when my Twitter traffic increases, so does my SEO traffic.

Getting social signals helps your blog rank well on search engines, but social signals also help you get more engagement on social media. That translates to more followers, more social signals, and ultimately, more blog traffic.

How exactly do you get more social signals for your social media content? Here are 10 ways:

#1: Be Active On More Social Networks

The more active you are on a social network, the higher the probability of you picking up social signals. The main reason being active helps you pick up more social signals is because your followers will have an easier time remembering who you are.

Think about it this way. Would you remember the person who posted something on social media once every month or the person who posted something on social media every day? The person who posts every day has more chances to appear on your home feed.

Posting daily also gives someone the ability to consistently show up on other people’s home feeds. When people see you enough times—and value your social media posts—they will eventually go to your profile and scroll through your social media posts.

Imagine you had large audiences scrolling through your Facebook posts, tweets, and pins. You can be sure that those same people are liking, retweeting, repinning, and commenting on your social media posts.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Getting mentioned counts as a social signal. Having conversations with our audiences allows us to build relationships with the people who build our success. Some conversations bring forth opportunities such as speaking events, TV appearances, and attention from big media outlets.

Why then do few people engage with their audiences.

It turns out most people who use social media are lurkers. Only 10% of social media users actually take the time to interact.The other 90% watch the interactions happen.

If you do not take the time to engage with your audience, then you don’t really know who your audience is. Engaging with your audience lets you know their problems. That helps you create better solutions.

I make it a point to engage with my audience every day. I thank people for sharing my content, spark conversations about my interests, and share my expertise. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had about running, dogs, and the Red Sox.

Engaging with your audience helps you get more traffic. Engaging with your audience helps people remember who you are. Want more blog traffic and social media followers? Engage with your audience.

#3: Post Awesome Content

Okay, we’ve all heard this one a lot. We want to post awesome content so people come back for more.

But what is awesome content? Here’s a better question: What do your followers think awesome content is?

My followers and a sports analyst’s followers have two different definitions of awesome content. The sports analyst’s followers define awesome content as fascinating information about a sport or athlete.

I don’t like speaking for everyone in my audience. But based on what I know, digital marketing and audience growth are two things many of my followers define as awesome content. Once you know how your followers define awesome content, keep on posting that type of content.

Every month, I always look through the tweets that I sent. I look at what worked and what did not work. The tweets that got dozens of retweets and the tweets that didn’t lead to a single click. I stop tweeting what doesn’t work and continue tweeting what does work.

The result was a dramatic increase in traffic. The first time I implemented this strategy, my daily Twitter traffic increased by over 70% in just two weeks. Ever since the change, I have maintained that increase.

Remember that just because you think something is awesome does not mean your audience will think it is awesome. Before publishing a social media post, ask yourself whether your audience would appreciate the content in the same way that you do.

#4: Post Often Throughout The Day

I don’t get dozens of clicks from each of my tweets. In most cases, I am lucky if I get more than a dozen clicks per tweet. However, since I send over 100 tweets every day, it is easy to imagine why I get hundreds of daily blog visitors from Twitter.

Posting often throughout the day allows you to get consistent traffic and see a consistent rise in your social signals. If you wanted to get 50 retweets every day, would you feel more confident with sending one tweet per day or sending 50 tweets per day. If you send 50 tweets per day, then each tweet only needs one tweet to achieve your goal.

I am not advising you to send hundreds upon hundreds of social media posts every day just to achieve your goal. And while I do send over 100 tweets per day, I would never send over 100 Facebook posts per day. The way Twitter users engage with the platform makes it possible for me to send over 100 tweets per day without annoying my followers.

You should make it a point to send out at least 10 social media posts every day. That way, you will get more engagement, and it will be easier for people to remember who you are.

#5: Outsource Some Of The Work

Remember the time when a scheduled pin got published on my account? I do. While I don’t remember scheduling that pin, I remember outsourcing it to someone else.

I can easily send 100 tweets every day because of HootSuite’s game changing bulk scheduler which lets me schedule a day’s worth of tweets (over 100) in just six clicks. Pinterest on the other hand isn’t nearly as easy. Some pins that I scheduled on my own took more than five minutes for me to schedule.

Then I outsourced, and now I can schedule one pin for every hour without putting in the work. It is okay to trade money for time even if you know how to do something. I know how to schedule pins, but I choose not to.

Since I have someone scheduling pins to tens of thousands of my Pinterest followers throughout the day, I get more engagement and social signals from Pinterest.

#6: Use Keywords and Hashtags In Your Posts

Utilizing keywords and hashtags within your posts makes it easier for people to find your social media posts within the social media search engines. Most people are so caught up with ranking well on Google that they forget about ranking well on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks.

Facebook, Twitter, and every other social network are search engines in the same way that Google is. You search information and then get a bunch of results.

Using the right keywords and hashtags in your posts will lead to more visibility and social signals. To find the right keywords and hashtags in your social media strategy, take a look at what keywords and hashtags similar people in your niche use.

#7: Include Pictures In Your Posts

The human mind understands an image 60,000 times faster than text. It’s no wonder that social media posts with pictures get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. Some people report that their social media posts with pictures get five times as much engagement as social media posts without pictures.

Want to double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of retweets and Facebook likes you get? Taking the extra minute to add a picture in your social media post can make all of the difference.

#8: Cross-Promotion

One reason new businesses have been staying away from Facebook lately is because of Facebook’s algorithm changes. These changes have enforced a pay-to-play atmosphere that favors the big guy at the expense of the little guy.

I created a Facebook Page and largely forgot about it. When I started to use that Facebook Page more often, it had a little over 100 likes. On Facebook, I was the little guy.

Since Facebook wasn’t bringing in any blog traffic yet, I held off on Facebook ads. I wanted to see what I could do to grow an audience on my own without spending money. So I went to my other social networks to promote my Facebook Page.

I included the link to the Facebook Page in YouTube video descriptions and made sure I tweeted about the Facebook Page every day. The result was that the page quickly went from getting no likes per day to getting several likes per day. What I post on the Facebook Page also got more attention, likes, and comments.

There are some days when I get as many as seven Facebook likes every day. It’s not game changing, and at that rate, it will take me a while to reach my first 1,000 Facebook Page likes. However, it’s a start. At one point, I gained no more than 10 Twitter followers per day. Now I always find myself in the 300-500 range for daily Twitter followers.

#9: Host Contests and Giveaways

You can give away almost anything—Amazon Gift cards, consultation sessions, or vacations to Bermuda—and your followers will engage. When you host a giveaway, make it clear that someone only gains entry by giving you certain social signals.

On Twitter, I would ask for retweets, and retweets only. On Facebook, I would ask for likes and shares. On Pinterest, I would ask for repins and likes.

You want to ask for the social signals that would put your content in front of other people’s audiences. A favorite on Twitter does not do that type of justice.

#10: ADVANCED TIP—BE CAUTIOUS

Approach this tip with caution. If used at the right time, it can skyrocket your social media growth. If used at the wrong time, your social media results will fall flat.

Create multiple social media accounts on the same social network.

On Twitter, I have multiple Twitter accounts, not just @MarcGuberti. My accounts have thousands of followers, and I use these accounts to promote my blog posts. One of my accounts is @Tips4Tweeting, and I promote my blog with tweets like these:

Those links lead to some of the blog posts on my blog. These tweets count as social signals for Google, and the tweets themselves also get some engagement.

I interact with my @Tips4Tweeting audience in the same way I interact with the people who follow my main account. While this is a great strategy for some people, it can eat up too much time for other people.

You shouldn’t approach this method until you have at least 10,000 followers on a social network and have discovered a way to use that social network in the most time efficient way possible—either using time efficient tools or by outsourcing.

I am not alone. Some businesses have more than a dozen different accounts on the same social networks, and chances are you’ve heard of some of them.

Mashable
The Huffington Post
Twitter
MLB
NFL

Two things to note is that powerful businesses implement this method and that they all outsource the work. They have ridiculously deep pockets which makes it possible for them. That is why it is important for you to master one social network in a time efficient manner before you approach this advanced tip.

In Conclusion

Social signals are important for search engines. They result in search engines ranking your content higher. The result is more traffic from search engines but also more traffic from your social networks.

How do you get social signals? Do you think SEO is overrated? Which tips will you be implementing first? Have any other tips for us? Sound off in the comments section now!

My Twitter Story: Tweeting Frequency and Beating The Plateau

August 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

I have experimented with Twitter more times than I count. I experiment with my bio, my tweets, the pictures I use, and other things to provide the best possible experience for my audience while achieving incredible results.

One part of Twitter I am always experimenting with is tweeting frequency. Many experts have different advice about tweeting frequency. Some will say that sending more than 10 tweets per day is excessive. Other people will say that you should send one tweet every hour to account for different timezones.

I have utilized different tweeting frequencies ever since I created my Twitter account. In the beginning, I was a very inconsistent tweeter. I tweeted whenever I felt like it. I had great things to say, but I wasn’t committed to Twitter yet. If I didn’t want to write a tweet, I didn’t.

Then, I came across HootSuite and the entire concept of scheduling tweets fascinated me. I started with manually scheduling 10 tweets per day.

Sure enough, my engagement picked up. For the first time, I was consistently sending tweets every day at the same times throughout the day. After seeing engagement pick up, I discovered I had a chance with Twitter.

After getting the initial engagement, I exclusively experimented with scheduling tweets instead of tweeting whenever I felt like doing so. Scheduling tweets build my commitment towards using the platform.

The next major step was schedule 24 tweets per day. While that would mathematically add up to one tweet per hour, I decided to send one tweet every 30 minutes from 9 am to 9 pm eastern.

My engagement spiked within those times. After the last tweet got sent at 9 pm, I would gradually lose engagement and then regain momentum at 9 am.

I went along with this pattern for a while. Then, I decided to tweet every hour. It was at this point—with a little over 10,000 Twitter followers—that I started to get over 100 daily visitors to my blog from Twitter alone.

I then tweeted once every 30 minutes. After getting more traffic that way, I decided to send one tweet every 15 minutes. My traffic increased even more.

Then I hit a plateau. I was also slowly going downhill.

When I got my 100,000th Twitter follower, my blog got a little over 300 daily visitors from Twitter. When I got my 200,000th Twitter follower, my blog got a little under 300 daily visitors from Twitter.

It’s safe to say I was discouraged. I knew the second batch of 100,000 Twitter followers were not rogue people. Many of them engaged with me just like the first 100,000 Twitter followers I got.

How was I getting less traffic even though I doubled my audience? I was using the same tweeting cycle. I was setting the same group of tweets that worked with my first 100,000 Twitter followers.

I discovered the problem in the most unlikely of ways—by submitting an application to be an Inc Magazine columnist. One thing Inc Magazine recommended is that applicants share their content on social networks and engage with Inc Magazine’s social media accounts.

I had read the magazine for a while. I decided to send three tweets promoting Inc Magazine every day. I read more articles and tweeted the ones I liked. For the first time in over a year, I rose above my plateau.

On the day I tweeted three articles from Inc Magazine, my traffic from Twitter exceeded 350 daily visitors. That was my initial peak during the plateau. In a few more days, I was up to 400 daily visitors from Twitter. I had never done that before, and now I was doing it every day.

After I realized I could pass my plateau, I explored other methods to rise farther above my original plateau. I changed up the tweets I sent based on which tweets were getting the most (and least) amount of engagement. I started to tweet more of what worked and less of what didn’t work.

That change resulted in me consistently getting over 450 daily visitors from Twitter. That adds up to 13,500. At my plateau, I ranged anywhere from 8,000 to 9,800 visitors from Twitter every month. I never reached 10,000 in one month.

1,000 Daily Visitors From Twitter?

That’s the next goal I am going after. By making a few small tweaks, I went from a plateau of anywhere from 275-325 daily visitors from Twitter to over 450 daily visitors from Twitter.

Part of the change is more of my followers engaging with my content. Part of it is that my content is now shared more often.

I now manage multiple accounts that I use to promote my blog. By the end of the year, if I can outsource them, I easily imagine myself with seven different Twitter accounts. I already have four.

Now that I broke past my plateau, I am looking at more ways to grow.

Takeaways

Here are some takeaways to get from my Twitter story:

Tweet more often. I send one tweet every 15 minutes. That doesn’t include when I actually engage with my followers. If you look at my statistics on TwitterCounter, don’t be shocked if you see days when I sent over 150 tweets.
Plateaus don’t exist in business. Plateaus in business are simply illusions. For a long time, I thought I would keep on getting 275-325 daily visitors from Twitter—regardless of how large my audience became. Making some small changes allowed me to get a 33% increase in traffic overnight. In three weeks after making this change, my weekly blog traffic increased by over 30%.
Always experiment. One reason I hit my plateau is because I didn’t experiment as much. I had little time to experiment during my junior year, so I made the experimentation (and discovery) in the summer. To find more time to experiment during school, I have outsourced many of my activities to my assistants.

In Conclusion

Twitter is my favorite social network. It presents great opportunities for building connections and getting a massive amount of traffic. The moment you see yourself plateauing on Twitter, it’s not because Twitter is broken or that you can actually plateau.

The reason people plateau on Twitter is usually because they stop experimenting and trying new things. Look at your Twitter strategy and see what small tweaks you can make to get better results. Sometimes—like in my case—the smallest tweak can be the difference between an extra 5,000 monthly visitors.

What are your thoughts about using Twitter? Do you get blog traffic from Twitter? Have you hit a plateau? Sound off in the comments section below!

The 7 Types Of Tweets You Must Send Every Day

August 21, 2015 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

The Best Tweets To Send — Are you tweeting correctly?

Want to attract a large audience to your Twitter handle? If you do, then you aren’t alone. Many people aspire to get thousands of Twitter followers, and with each milestone, the possibilities expand.

I have analyzed many Twitter accounts, and I analyze my own account every day of the week. I don’t want to go as far to say that I live and breathe Twitter—the founders get to say that—but I am highly active on the social network.

During my analysis, I saw which tweets picked up engagement and which ones were left behind. I saw what other people did differently from me that either resulted in an increase or decrease in engagement. I implemented what worked for other people and experimented along the way to grow my Twitter audience.

One important lesson I learned from my entrepreneurial journey is that you must prepare yourself for success. Success won’t just come, no matter what you pursue. To prepare yourself for success on Twitter, you need to know what tweets you will send to your followers.

I know exactly what tweets I publish and when because all of my tweets are in a CSV file that I upload to HootSuite. Eliminating the problem of searching for content makes it easier to interact with your audience and promote yourself. So how do you create successful tweets that give you followers and results? You must utilize all seven of these types of tweets in a given day:

#1: Blog Promotion Tweet

Since you are taking the time to grow your audience, you should get some of the people in that audience to see your content. If that audience also happens to be a targeted audience, then the people in your audience will more than likely appreciate your blog’s content.

Many of the tweets I send out promote my blog posts. I have no problem with self-promotion because if you don’t self-promote, then how will people know about you beyond Twitter? Tweets about my blog posts garner hundreds of daily retweets, favorites, and conversations. This translates to hundreds of people visiting my blog from Twitter every day.

However, getting blog traffic from Twitter doesn’t just mean more traffic from Twitter. One of the secrets that makes Twitter so special is that Twitter helps out with SEO. Search engines will rank your content higher if they see you engaging with your audience and getting your audience to engage with your blog posts via Twitter.

Each time my Twitter traffic picks up, my SEO traffic picks up. Each time my Twitter traffic goes down, my SEO traffic goes down. They are both connected.

#2: Landing Page Tweet

Your email list is your most important asset. I have stated this truth in many of my blog posts, and if you come across another digital marketing blog that talks about the email list, you’ll probably read something like “The money is in the email list.”

I under utilized my email list for a long time and didn’t care about growing it. The end result was that 150,000 blog visitors and over 100,000 Twitter followers later, my income barely changed. I wondered if I grew my Twitter audience for no reason, but then I learned about the importance of an email list, and equally as important, the landing page.

Now I send out numerous tweets about my landing pages. In fact, I send one tweet about one of my landing pages every hour. Whether it’s 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter or my Productivity Rubric, you’ll occasionally see some tweets about them if you follow me on Twitter. It’s my way of providing my audience with free value while taking the relationship between me and my audience one step further.

#3: Guest Post Tweet

You don’t want to exclusively tweet about your landing page and content from your blog. You also want to blend some of your guest posts into the mix. Why? Guest posts build authority.

Just think of it this way. A blogger can exclusively tweet his own blog posts or occasionally send some tweets of his articles on Inc Magazine. While this is an extreme example, any guest post you have builds credibility. Having a guest post is a way of saying that your content is good enough to appear on other people’s blogs.

I send anywhere from 1-3 tweets containing my guest posts every day. Although my Twitter followers are not on my blog at this time, they still get to see my content at the bottom along with my bio. If you don’t have much experience with writing guest posts, here’s how to start.

#4: Funny Tweet

I watch hundreds of people speak every year at live events and on YouTube. The people who keep my attention for the longest amount of time are the informative storytellers who utilize humor.

Humor is one of the unsung heroes of many successful business strategies. Saying something funny makes it easier for us to remember who you are. We’ll come back to your Twitter handle again and again to see if you posted new, funny pictures or articles.

Funny tweets are directly related to your niche and are primarily tweets that your targeted audience would understand. Depending on your targeted audience, you may need to geek out during a funny tweet, but there is no problem with geeking out. In fact, geeking out is actually a good thing since geeking out exposes some of your personality. Geeking out allows your followers to feel a deeper personal connection with you and your message.

My goal before the end of 2015 is to get better at sending funny tweets. While most people should send 1-5 funny tweets per day, you may find yourself sending more or less depending on your niche.

#5: Inspirational Tweet

One thing I always got right with Twitter was the inspirational tweet. I send anywhere from 5-10 of these tweets out to my audience every day. I even decided to create a motivational quotes account that sends one motivational tweet every hour.

Inspirational tweets give your followers the motivation to do the work that they were previously scared of. Inspirational tweets challenge people to think outside of limits and explore the possibilities.

If you send these types of tweets every day, some of your followers will primarily visit your Twitter handle to read through some of your inspirational quotes. As the relationship continues to build, your followers will like what you do and decide to visit your blog.

#6: Value In A Pic Tweet

Not all of your Twitter followers will want to leave Twitter to visit your blog—no matter how good your blog posts’ headlines are. However, you still want to provide these followers with value so they remember you and continue reading your tweets.

The ideal solution for this problem is the Value In A Pic Tweet. In this type of tweet, you tweet out a picture with text that explains how to do something or states a tip. I use Canva to create my pictures, and the text you use should be 1-2 sentences. The key is to make the text concise so your followers can get quick value and then look through other tweets.

Some people who see your Value In A Pic tweet may suddenly get intrigued and want to take a look at what you do. Putting your website URL and a picture of you or your logo at the bottom of the picture builds brand recognition and boosts the likelihood of those people coming back for more tweets (or visiting your blog). If you want to do a product campaign, you can also include a picture of your product at the bottom to give it more visibility.

#7: SEC Tweet

The SEC (Someone Else’s Content) Tweet is the tweet that most people either skip over or use too often. Most of the accounts I analyzed were on one end of the totem pole or on the other end—either 100% self-promotional or 100% promoting other people’s content.

Don’t make the mistake of under utilizing this tweet, but also avoid the mistake of overusing it. To keep a happy medium, anywhere from 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC tweets. The actual percentage depends on the number of valuable blog posts and guest posts you have.

The less content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 40%. The more content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 20%.

SEC Tweets let your followers know the following:

You pay attention to other people in your niche
You learn from other people in your niche
You aren’t overly self-promotional

You don’t have to send out a massive amount of SEC Tweets every day, but 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC Tweets so you provide your followers with greater variety.

In Conclusion

Knowing what types of tweets to send out will allow you to prepare for success on Twitter. Once you know what tweets you will send to your followers, you can spend your time doing other things such as marketing your blog posts and growing your Twitter audience.

Which of these types of tweets do you use most often? Do you achieve a happy balance of all seven? Do you think any other type of tweet should be added? Sound off in the comments section below!